Musharraf Farooqi - Between Clay and Dust

His continuous deference to his brother’s authority and belief in his infallible strength had instilled a sense of inferiority and inadequacy in Tamami. As the myth of Ustad Ramzi’s strength was now shattered, the shadow under which Tamami had walked was also lifted. He realized he was his brother’s superior in strength. He savored the sense of power.

Ustad Ramzi did not wait for Tamami’s move. He applied the overhead drag Tamami had intended. Before Ustad Ramzi could finish, however, Tamami countered by uncoiling his body and aggressively grasping Ustad Ramzi’s arm in a lock.

Ustad Ramzi laughed nervously as he struggled to rise.

Tamami quickly let go.

“Yes! Yes! When did the young lion ever turn away before the old?” Ustad Ramzi said. “But the old lion is not done yet. Come!”

Tamami could not overcome his feelings. Even as Ustad Ramzi spoke, their arms again locked together, Tamami rolled Ustad Ramzi’s arm to break its grip on his elbow, then applied the drag, simultaneously stepping in to throw him down. Ustad Ramzi managed to use the counter-drag in time, and both of them hit the clay with Ustad Ramzi on top.

“I shall take some rest,” Ustad Ramzi spoke in a strained voice as he got up and patted Tamami’s back. Before stepping out of the akhara he turned towards the trainees and said, “You should continue exercising until Tamami gives you leave.”

Tamami contended with his conflicting emotions.

He was glad that Ustad Ramzi’s redrag had foiled his move and saved him the shame. He had proved himself stronger than his brother but in the midst of applying the maneuver, he realized that he was about to floor his elder brother and the champion of the clan. It would have been an unforgivable act of disrespect.

And yet, Tamami felt an inner satisfaction. Now he has proof of my strength, he told himself. Those who have witnessed it also know now who is stronger. They won’t be able to say that the clan’s title would be in unworthy hands.

As Ustad Ramzi walked away Tamami saw how consumed and decayed he looked. The signs of ageing were visible on his body. His brother’s physical weakness filled Tamami’s heart with revulsion.

After his encounter with Tamami that day, Ustad Ramzi went straight to the cemetery.

The incident in the akhara kept replaying itself in his mind’s eye. He hadn’t grappled with Tamami for a few months and it was a shock to realize that his brother was now physically stronger. As they stood locked in the tie-up position, Ustad Ramzi had felt the iron grip of Tamami’s hands around his neck. Tamami’s powerful thrust and the immense surge of strength flowing from his body had broken his stance. He had strained to answer Tamami’s push and failed.

In the brief moment when Tamami paused, two thoughts raced through Ustad Ramzi’s mind: that Tamami’s strength must be carefully adorned with skill to make him the protector of his clan’s honor, and that he could now put his mind at rest about his clan’s future. Later, as Tamami applied the aggressive countermove, the joy that had filled Ustad Ramzi’s heart left it without a trace.

Tamami’s intention to floor him had been too obvious.

Ustad Ramzi asked himself why it had happened. He saw his strength and Tamami’s as an entity, meant to strive in unison, not as counterweights. He had never considered that he was pitting his strength against his brother as a rival. After delegating his akhara duties to Tamami and trusting his brother with instructing the trainees, he had kept him under his own instruction to improve his skill. Tamami had not appreciated that. It troubled Ustad Ramzi.

It was not an incident that he could attribute to Tamami’s immaturity. Ustad Ramzi was sure it flowed from some base instinct.

It convinced him that Tamami judged himself and others by the criterion of strength alone. Tamami, whom he wished to become worthy of representing his clan’s tradition, had again proven incapable of aspiring to the higher rewards of the art. That was the reason for his ignominious defeat at Imama’s hands and for the incident in the akhara that day. Ustad Ramzi knew that for such men power remained the only ideal. The more they felt it stir inside their bodies, the more confident they felt in themselves.

Ustad Ramzi realized he could not relinquish his place to someone who neither showed deference to his tradition and elders nor understood the subtle points of skill. But he could turn Tamami’s failings to the clan’s advantage by changing the focus of his training to the cultivation of strength alone. Tamami would not become a consummate pahalwan once set on that course, but he would have the disproportionate strength necessary to block any challengers to the clan’s title. Ustad Ramzi would never let it be said that the title was lost to his clan while he lived.

Ustad Ramzi’s mind was finally decided. He thought no more about the akhara incident and spent the afternoon tending the rose bushes.

The acrid smell of the wilted jasmine flowers in the copper bowl, and the sight of the perfume- soaked cotton plugs in the glass bowl reminded Gohar Jan of Malka who used to arrange them for the mehfils. Something told her she would not return.

Gohar Jan had foreseen Malka going away from her life and was reconciled to it when it occurred. With her decision never to attach herself to any one man, Gohar Jan had also prepared herself for a life of solitude. She had assumed that it was not given to her to find satisfaction in a relationship. She found it instead in a discipline that needed a similar degree of tending and self-sacrifice. Now, that satisfaction was being replaced with anxiety.

Gohar Jan had been unprepared for the possibility of the kotha closing down because it had come about through a series of unforeseeable events. She felt helpless in quelling the feeling of loss that grew inside her. The passions and the energy of the kotha life and its glamour had given her life a sense of purpose and contentment, and its charms had sustained her in her womanhood’s prime and beyond; it had become her only reference to life.

Now that the unforeseen had come about, Gohar Jan’s impending solitude made her feel vulnerable and uncertain. She thought about the furrowed faces of old tawaifs sitting idly in their dark kothas waiting for their lives to end. She realized that she was now one of them.

Like waking from a dream broken in disquiet, she was unable to ward off her feeling of despair at the snapping of the thread that connected her past, present, and future. She felt restive and disoriented. Sometimes the walls, the furniture, even the Music Room where she had performed for decades, appeared unfamiliar. It seemed that the kotha had a secret life of its own that was extinguished when she closed its doors.

She wondered if she might have felt a greater sense of her life’s completeness if there had been someone to share it with her. She had never tried to answer this question before. Even the act of posing it might have been a tacit admission that she felt her life had been lacking. But with the boundaries of her world shrunk to the walls of her abode, and left with only a memory of the hustle and bustle of the kotha in days past, Gohar Jan was faced with the futility of her life’s endeavor and her life’s meaning. She could no longer escape it.

Shortly after the closure of Gohar Jan’s kotha, two remaining kothas also closed down. Evenings in the tawaifs’ enclave were finally silenced.

Their world no longer existed; but the tawaifs carried it within them in their memories, like exiles, and continued to adhere to a ritual of their lives. As before, they devoted the first act of the day to the vocal meditations of riyazat. The sound of their voices and their change of tone, timbre, and pitch still resonated in the tawaifs’ enclave at dawn. Gohar Jan, too, would get up at an early hour and sit down for her vocal meditations, but they brought her no satisfaction, no sense of peace.